CHAPTER I.
The “National Intelligencer,” which called public attention only to such points of interest as the Government wished to accent, noticed that President Madison was “dressed in a full suit of cloth of American manufacture” when he appeared at noon, March 4, 1809, under escort of the “troops of cavalry of the city and Georgetown,” amid a crowd of ten thousand people, to take the oath of office at the Capitol. The suit of American clothes told more of Madison’s tendencies than was to be learned from the language of the Inaugural Address, which he delivered in a tone of voice so low as not to be heard by the large audience gathered in the new and imposing Representatives’ Hall.[1] Indeed, the Address suggested a doubt whether the new President wished to be understood. The conventionality of his thought nowhere betrayed itself more plainly than in this speech on the greatest occasion of Madison’s life, when he was required to explain the means by which he should retrieve the failures of Jefferson.
“It is a precious reflection,” said Madison to his anxious audience, “that the transition from this prosperous condition of our country to the scene which has for some time been distressing us, is not chargeable on any unwarrantable views, nor as I trust on any voluntary errors, in the public councils. Indulging no passions which trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations, it has been the true glory of the United States to cultivate peace by observing justice, and to entitle themselves to the respect of the nations at war by fulfilling their neutral obligations with the most scrupulous impartiality. If there be candor in the world, the truth of these assertions will not be questioned; posterity at least will do justice to them.”
Since none of Madison’s enemies, either abroad or at home, intended to show him candor, his only hope was in posterity; yet the judgment of posterity depended chiefly on the course which the new President might take to remedy the misfortunes of his predecessor. The nation expected from him some impulse toward the end he had in mind; foreign nations were also waiting to learn whether they should have to reckon with a new force in politics; but Madison seemed to show his contentment with the policy hitherto pursued, rather than his wish to change it.
“This unexceptionable course,” he continued, “could not avail against the injustice and violence of the belligerent Powers. In their rage against each other, or impelled by more direct motives, principles of retaliation have been introduced equally contrary to universal reason and acknowledged law. How long their arbitrary edicts will be continued, in spite of the demonstrations that not even a pretext for them has been given by the United States, and of the fair and liberal attempt to induce a revocation of them, cannot be anticipated. Assuring myself that under every vicissitude the determined spirit and united councils of the nation will be safeguards to its honor and essential interests, I repair to the post assigned me, with no other discouragement than what springs from my own inadequacy to its high duties.”
Neither the actual world nor posterity could find much in these expressions on which to approve or condemn the policy of Madison, for no policy could be deduced from them. The same iteration of commonplaces marked the list of general principles which filled the next paragraph of the Address. Balancing every suggestion of energy by a corresponding limitation of scope, Madison showed only a wish to remain within the limits defined by his predecessor. “To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having corresponding dispositions” seemed to imply possible recourse to war with other nations; but “to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by an appeal to arms” seemed to exclude the use of force. “To promote by authorized means improvements friendly to agriculture, to manufactures, and to external as well as internal commerce” was a phrase so cautiously framed that no one could attack it. “To support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities,” seemed a duty so guarded as to need no further antithesis; yet Madison did not omit the usual obligation “to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people, as equally incorporated with, and essential to, the success of the general system.” No one could object to the phrases with which the Address defined Executive duties; but no one could point out a syllable implying that Madison would bend his energies with sterner purpose to maintain the nation’s rights.
At the close of the speech Chief-Justice Marshall administered the oath; the new President then passed the militia in review, and in the evening Madison and Jefferson attended an inauguration ball, where “the crowd was excessive, the heat oppressive, and the entertainment bad.”[2] With this complaint, so familiar on the occasion, the day ended, and President Madison’s troubles began.
About March 1, Wilson Cary Nicholas had called on the President elect to warn him that he must look for serious opposition to the expected appointment of Gallatin as Secretary of State. Nicholas had the best reason to know that Giles, Samuel Smith, and Leib were bent on defeating Gallatin.
“I believed from what I heard he would be rejected,” wrote Nicholas two years afterward;[3] “and that at all events, if he was not, his confirmation would be by a bare majority. During my public service but one event had ever occurred that gave me as much uneasiness: I mean the degradation of the country at that very moment by the abandonment of [the embargo].”
The two events were in fact somewhat alike in character. That Gallatin should become Secretary of State seemed a point of little consequence, even though it were the only remaining chance for honorable peace; but that another secretary should be forced on the President by a faction in the Senate, for the selfish objects of men like Samuel Smith and Giles, foreboded revolution in the form of government. Nicholas saw chiefly the danger which threatened his friends; but the remoter peril to Executive independence promised worse evils than could be caused even by the overthrow of the party in power at a moment of foreign aggression.
The effort of Giles and Smith to control Madison had no excuse. Gallatin’s foreign birth, the only objection urged against him, warranted doubt, not indeed of his fitness, but of difficulty in obliging European powers to deal with a native of Geneva, who was in their eyes either a subject of their own or an enemy at war; but neither Napoleon nor King George in the year 1809 showed so much regard to American feelings that the United States needed to affect delicacy in respect to theirs; and Gallatin’s foreign birth became a signal advantage if it should force England to accept the fact, even though she refused to admit the law, of American naturalization. Gallatin’s fitness was undisputed, and the last men who could question it were Giles and Samuel Smith, who had been his friends for twenty years, had trusted their greatest party interests in his hands, had helped to put the Treasury under his control, and were at the moment keeping him at its head when they might remove him to the less responsible post of minister for foreign affairs. Any question of Gallatin’s patriotism suggested ideas even more delicate than those raised by doubts of his fitness. A party which had once trusted Burr and which still trusted Wilkinson, not to mention Giles himself, had little right to discuss Gallatin’s patriotism, or the honesty of foreign-born citizens. Even the mild-spoken Wilson Cary Nicholas almost lost his temper at this point. “I honestly believe,” he wrote in 1811, “if all our native citizens had as well discharged their duty to their country, that we should by our energy have extorted from both England and France a respect for our rights, and that before this day we should have extricated ourselves from all our embarrassments instead of having increased them.” The men who doubted Gallatin’s patriotism were for the most part themselves habitually factious, or actually dallying with ideas of treason.
Had any competent native American been pressed for the Department of State, the Senate might still have had some pretext for excluding Gallatin; but no such candidate could be suggested. Giles was alone in thinking himself the proper secretary; Samuel Smith probably stood in the same position; Monroe still sulked in opposition and discredit; Armstrong, never quite trusted, was in Paris; William Pinkney and J. Q. Adams were converts too recent for such lofty promotion; G. W. Campbell and W. H. Crawford had neither experience nor natural fitness for the post. The appointment of Gallatin not only seemed to be, but actually was, necessary to Madison’s Administration.
No argument affected the resistance of Giles and Samuel Smith, and during the early days of March Madison could see no means of avoiding a party schism. From that evil, at such a stage, he shrank. While the subject still stood unsettled, some unknown person suggested a new idea. If Robert Smith could be put in the Treasury, his brother Samuel would vote to confirm Gallatin as Secretary of State. The character of such a transaction needed no epithet; but Madison went to Robert Smith and offered him the Treasury.[4] He knew Smith to be incompetent, but he thought that with Gallatin’s aid even an incompetent person might manage the finances; and perhaps his astuteness went so far as to foresee what was to happen,—that he should deal with the Smiths on some better occasion in a more summary manner. Madison’s resemblance to a cardinal was not wholly imaginary.[5]
While Robert Smith went to inquire into the details of Treasury business before accepting the offered post, the President consulted with Gallatin, who rejected the scheme at once. He could not, he said, undertake the charge of both departments; the President would do better to appoint Robert Smith Secretary of State, and leave the Treasury as it was. Madison seized this outlet of escape. He returned to Robert Smith with the offer of the State Department, which Smith accepted. In making this arrangement Madison knew that he must himself supply Smith’s deficiencies; but stronger wills than that of Madison had yielded to party discontent, and he gained much if he gained only time.
The true victim of the bargain was Gallatin, who might wisely have chosen the moment for retiring from the Cabinet; but after declining an arrangement in his favor, he could not fairly desert the President, who had offered to sacrifice much for him, and he was too proud to avow a personal slight as the motive of his public action. Weakened already by the unexpected decline of his influence in the Senate, his usefulness was sure to be still further lessened by the charge of clinging to office; but after weighing the arguments for retirement he decided to remain,[6] although he could not, even if he would, forget that the quarrel which had been forced upon him must be met as vigorously as it was made.
The War and Navy Departments remained to be filled. Dearborn, who had continued in the War Department chiefly to oblige President Jefferson, retired in the month of February to become Collector of the port of Boston. As his successor, Madison selected William Eustis, of Boston, who had served in Congress during Jefferson’s first Administration. Eustis was about fifty-six years old; in the Revolutionary War he had filled the post of hospital surgeon, and since the peace he had practised his profession in Boston. Little could be said of the appointment, except that no other candidate was suggested who seemed better qualified for the place.[7]
To succeed Robert Smith at the Navy Department, Madison selected Paul Hamilton, of South Carolina. Nothing was known of Hamilton, except that he had been governor of his State some ten years before. No one seemed aware why he had attracted the President’s attention, or what qualities fitted him for the charge of naval affairs; but he appeared in due time at Washington,—a South Carolinian gentleman, little known in society or even to his colleagues in the government, and little felt as an active force in the struggle of parties and opinions.
From the outset Madison’s Cabinet was the least satisfactory that any President had known. More than once the Federalist cabinets had been convulsed by disagreements, but the Administration of Madison had hardly strength to support two sides of a dispute. Gallatin alone gave it character, but was himself in a sort of disgrace. The Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Navy, overshadowed in the Cabinet by Gallatin, stood in a position of inevitable hostility to his influence, although they represented neither ideas nor constituents. While Gallatin exacted economy, the army and navy required expenditures, and the two secretaries necessarily looked to Robert Smith as their friend. Toward Robert Smith Gallatin could feel only antipathy, which was certainly shared by Madison. “We had all been astonished at his appointment,” said Joel Barlow two years afterward;[8] “we all learned the history of that miserable intrigue by which it was effected.” Looking upon Robert Smith’s position as the result of a “miserable intrigue,” Gallatin could make no secret of his contempt. The social relations between them, which had once been intimate, wholly ceased.
To embroil matters further, the defalcation of a navy agent at Leghorn revealed business relations between the Navy Department and Senator Samuel Smith’s mercantile firm which scandalized Gallatin and drew from him a sharp criticism. He told Samuel Smith that the transactions of the firm of Smith and Buchanan were the most extraordinary that had fallen within his knowledge since he had been in the Treasury, and had left very unfavorable impressions on his mind.[9] Smith was then struggling for a re-election to the Senate, and felt the hand of Gallatin as a chief obstacle in his way. The feud became almost mortal under these reciprocal injuries; but Samuel Smith gained all his objects, and for the time held Gallatin and Madison at his mercy. Had he been able to separate them, his influence would have had no bounds, except his want of ability.
Yet Madison was always a dangerous enemy, gifted with a quality of persistence singularly sure in its results. An example of this persistence occurred at the moment of yielding to the Smiths’ intrigues, when, perhaps partly in the hope of profiting by his sacrifice, he approached the Senate once more on the subject of the mission to Russia. February 27, the nomination of William Short to St. Petersburg had been unanimously rejected. March 6, with the nominations of Robert Smith and William Eustis to the Cabinet, Madison sent the names of J. Q. Adams as minister at St. Petersburg, and of Thomas Sumter as minister to Brazil. He asked the Senate to establish two new missions at once. March 7 the Senate confirmed all the other nominations, but by a vote of seventeen to fifteen, adhered to the opinion that a mission to Russia was inexpedient. Both Giles and Samuel Smith supported the Government; but the two senators from Pennsylvania, the two from Kentucky, together with Anderson of Tennessee and William H. Crawford, persisted in aiding the Federalists to defeat the President’s wish. Yet the majority was so small as to prove that Madison would carry his point in the end. Senators who rejected the services of Gallatin and John Quincy Adams in order to employ those of Robert Smith, Dr. Eustis, and Governor Hamilton could not but suffer discredit. Faction which had no capacity of its own, and which showed only dislike of ability in others, could never rule a government in times of danger or distress.
After thus embarrassing the President in organizing his service the Senate rose, leaving Madison in peace until May 22, when the Eleventh Congress was to meet in special session. The outlook was more discouraging than at the beginning of any previous Administration. President Jefferson had strained his authority to breaking, and the sudden reaction threw society as well as government into disorder. The factiousness at Washington reflected only in a mild form the worse factiousness elsewhere. The Legislature of Massachusetts, having issued its Address to the People, adjourned; and a few days afterward the people, by an election which called out more than ninety thousand votes, dismissed their Republican governor, and by a majority of two or three thousand chose Christopher Gore in his place. The new Legislature was more decidedly Federalist than the old one. New Hampshire effected the same revolution. Rhode Island followed. In New York the Federalists carried the Legislature, as they did also in Maryland.
Even in Pennsylvania, although nothing shook the fixed political character of the State, the epidemic of faction broke out. While the legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut declared Acts of Congress unconstitutional, and refused aid to execute them, the legislature of Pennsylvania authorized Governor Snyder to resist by armed force a mandate of the Supreme Court; and when the United States marshal attempted to serve process on the person of certain respondents at the suit of Gideon Olmstead, he found himself stopped by State militia acting under orders.
In a country where popular temper had easier means of concentrating its violence, government might have been paralyzed by these proofs of low esteem; but America had not by far reached such a stage, and dark as the prospect was both within and without, Madison could safely disregard dangers on which most rulers had habitually to count. His difficulties were only an inheritance from the old Administration, and began to disappear as quickly as they had risen. At a word from the President the State of Pennsylvania recovered its natural common-sense, and with some little sacrifice of dignity gave way. The popular successes won by the Federalists were hardly more serious than the momentary folly of Pennsylvania. As yet, the Union stood in no danger. The Federalists gained many votes; but these were the votes of moderate men who would desert their new companions on the first sign of a treasonable act, and their presence tended to make the party cautious rather than rash. John Henry, the secret agent of Sir James Craig, reported with truth to the governor-general that the Federalist leaders at Boston found disunion a very delicate topic, and that “an unpopular war ... can alone produce a sudden separation of any section of this country from the common head.”[10] In public, the most violent Federalists curbed their tongues whenever the Union was discussed, and instead of threatening to dissolve it, contented themselves by charging the blame on the Southern States in case it should fall to pieces. Success sobered them; the repeal of the embargo seemed so great a triumph that they were almost tempted into good humor.
On the people of New England other motives more directly selfish began to have effect. The chief sources of their wealth were shipping and manufactures. The embargo destroyed the value of the shipping after it had been diminished by the belligerent edicts; the repeal of the embargo restored the value. The Federalist newspapers tried to prove that this was not the case, and that the Non-intercourse Act, which prohibited commerce with England, France, or their dependencies, was as ruinous as embargo itself; but the shipping soon showed that Gottenburg, Riga, Lisbon, and the Spanish ports in America were markets almost as convenient as London or Havre for the sale of American produce. The Yankee ship-owner received freights to Europe by circuitous routes, on the accumulations of two years in grain, cotton, tobacco, and timber, of the whole United States, besides the freights of an extended coast-trade. Massachusetts owned more than a third of the American registered tonnage, and the returns for 1809 and 1810 proved that her profits were great. The registered tonnage of Massachusetts employed in foreign trade was 213,000 tons in 1800, and rose to 310,000 tons in 1807 before the embargo; in 1809 it rose again to 324,000; in 1810 it made another leap to 352,000 tons. The coasting trade employed in 1807 about 90,000 tons of Massachusetts shipping which was much increased by the embargo, and again reduced by its repeal; but in 1809 and 1810 this enrolled shipping still stood far above the prosperous level of 1807, and averaged 110,000 tons for the two years.[11]
Such rapid and general improvement in shipping proved that New England had better employment than political factiousness to occupy the thoughts of her citizens; but large as the profits on freights might be, they hardly equalled the profits on manufactures. In truth, the manufactories of New England were created by the embargo, which obliged the whole nation to consume their products or to go without. The first American cotton mills, begun as early as 1787, met with so little success that when the embargo was imposed in 1807, only fifteen mills with about eight thousand spindles were in operation, producing some three hundred thousand pounds of yarn a year. These eight thousand spindles, representing a capital of half a million dollars, were chiefly in or near Rhode Island.
The embargo and non-importation Acts went into effect in the last days of 1807. Within less than two years the number of spindles was increased, or arrangements were made for increasing it, from eight thousand to eighty thousand.[12] Nearly four million dollars of capital were invested in mills, and four thousand persons were in their employ, or expected soon to be employed in them. The cotton cost about twenty cents a pound; the yarn sold on an average at about $1.12½ a pound. Besides these mills, which were worked mostly by water but partly by horsepower, the domestic manufacture of cotton and linen supplied a much larger part of the market. Two thirds of the clothing and house-linen used in the United States outside of the cities was made in farm-houses, and nearly every farmer in New England sold some portion of the stock woven every year by the women of his household. Much of this coarse but strong flaxen material, sold at about fifteen or twenty cents a yard by the spinner, was sent to the Southern States.[13]
While the cotton and linen industries of the North became profitable, the manufactures of wool lagged little behind. William Whittemore, who owned the patent for a machine which manufactured wool and cotton cards, reported from Cambridge in Massachusetts, Nov. 24, 1809, that only the want of card-wire prevented him from using all his machines to the full extent of their power.[14] “Since the obstructions to our foreign trade, the manufactures of our country have increased astonishingly,” he wrote. “The demand for wool and cotton cards the present season has been twice as great as it has been any year preceding.” Scarcity of good wool checked the growth of this industry, and the demand soon roused a mania among farmers for improving the breed of sheep. Between one hundred and three hundred per cent of profit attended all these industries, and little or no capital was required.
All the Northern and Eastern States shared in the advantages of this production, for which Virginia with the Western and Southern States paid; but in the whole Union New England fared best. Already the development of small industries had taken place, which, by making a varied aggregate, became the foundation and the security of Yankee wealth. Massachusetts taxed her neighbors on many small articles of daily use. She employed in the single manufacture of hats four thousand persons,—more than were yet engaged in the cotton mills. More than a million and a half of hats were annually made, and three fourths of these were sold beyond the State; between three and four million dollars a year flowed into Massachusetts in exchange for hats alone.[15] At Lynn, in Massachusetts, were made one hundred thousand pairs of women’s shoes every year. The town of Roxbury made eight hundred thousand pounds of soap. Massachusetts supplied the country with cut-iron nails to the value of twelve hundred thousand dollars a year. Connecticut supplied the whole country with tin-ware.
New industries sprang up rapidly on a soil and in a climate where the struggle of life was more severe than elsewhere in the Union, and where already capital existed in quantities that made production easy. One industry stimulated another. Women had much to do with the work, and their quickness and patience of details added largely to the income of New England at the cost of less active communities. Their hands wove most of the cotton and woollen cloths sent in large quantities to the West and South; but they were inventors as well as workmen. In 1801, when English straw-bonnets were in fashion, a girl of Wrentham, not far from Boston, found that she could make for herself a straw-hat as good as the imported one. In a few months every girl in the county of Norfolk made her own straw-bonnet; and soon the South and West paid two hundred thousand dollars a year to the county of Norfolk for straw hats and bonnets.[16]
At no time could such industries have been established without the stimulus of a handsome profit; but when Virginia compelled Massachusetts and the Northern States to accept a monopoly of the American market, the Yankee manufacturer must have expected to get, and actually got, great profits for his cottons and woollens, his hats, shoes, soap, and nails. As though this were not more than enough, Virginia gave the Northern shipowners the whole freight on Southern produce, two thirds of which in one form or another went into the hands of New England shipbuilders, shippers, and merchants. Slowly the specie capital of the Union drifted towards the Banks of Boston and New Haven, until, as the story will show, the steady drain of specie eastward bankrupted the other States and the national government. Never, before or since, was the country so racked to create and support monopolies as in 1808, 1809, and 1810, under Southern rule, and under the system of the President who began his career by declaring that if he could prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretence of protecting them, they must become happy.[17] The navy and army of the United States were employed, and were paid millions of dollars, during these years in order to shut out foreign competition, and compel New England at the cannon’s mouth to accept these enormous bribes.
The Yankee, however ill-tempered he might be, was shrewd enough to see where his profit lay. The Federalist leaders and newspapers grumbled without intermission that their life-blood was drained to support a negro-slave aristocracy, “baser than its own slaves,” as their phrase went; but they took the profits thrust upon them; and what they could not clutch was taken by New York and Pennsylvania, while Virginia slowly sank into ruin. Virginia paid the price to gratify her passion for political power; and at the time, she paid it knowingly and willingly. John Randolph protested almost alone. American manufactures owed more to Jefferson and Virginians, who disliked them, than to Northern statesmen, who merely encouraged them after they were established.
These movements and tendencies were rather felt than understood amid the uproar of personal and local interests; but the repeal of the embargo had the effect intended by the Virginians,—it paralyzed Pickering and the party of forcible resistance. New England quickly turned from revolutionary thoughts while she engaged in money-making; and as though the tide of fortune had at last set in Madison’s favor, a stroke of his diplomacy raised the tottering Administration to a sudden height of popularity such as Jefferson himself had never reached.